Thursday, 14 August 2014

Rest in Peace "Boy who not be named"

Most of you will have already heard of the sad death of "Boy who not be named". His funeral was this week and I would like to share something that I wrote and was that read out at his wake.

"If you find friendship or happiness then grab it and hang on to with all your strength. One day it will be snatched away from you by death and then it will be too late. One of the things that's helping me today is my knowledge that death awaits us all. I knew it was waiting and that it would eventually take all that I had ever known or cared about. Every living thing dies. The flowers I purchased for the funeral will soon be dead. I knew they would be when I purchased them, but I did it anyway for their beauty. And this is the way of things. No one alive today lived in the 1870s but life goes on. Cherish every hour, every minute, every second. And when it's over think back to the good times. It's all any of us can do."

Rest in Peace "Boy who not be named"

SOME BACKGROUND

The
"Boy who will not be named" was in foster care in the town where Ella
and I lived. He was one of a group of us who used to meet up most Sunday
afternoons in the park. The boys would have a kick around and the girls would
have a gossip. The burger van always used to arrived at 3:15 and we used to put
our money together to buy some hot food. Sometimes it was nearly a burger each
but once or twice it went right down to one bite each!

The "Boy who will not be named" was rather strange. He had no social
skills or interest in anything except science fiction and I think he had
Asperger's Syndrome. But in those early days he was clean and tidy and somebody
was obviously looking after him. After Ella and I "timed out" from
the Home at 18 we still went to the park most weeks and The "Boy who will
not be named" used to turn up every now and again. He had a part-time
weekend job in a warehouse so he only came along when he wasn't working. He
gradually looked tattier and became smellier so I think his foster placement
must have ended around that time.

I then went off to university but Ella still used to see him round the town.
One day he claimed to Ella that he had got a new job in Watford
(Hertfordshire). He seemed quite excited in his own way and he certainly wasn't
seen for ages so I suppose it is possible he really did move away. About 18
months ago he got back in touch with 38DD - the closest he had to a best
friend- mainly because she had the patience of a saint. He asked if he could
stay the night and things didn't go well. I will say no more! He then moved up to Merseyside and was hoping to do a secondment with a branch of his employers over in Canada. Sadly this will now never happen.

There were zero suspicious circumstances involved in his death. None at all, he simply died in his sleep from natural causes. Since the funeral a few people have sent me memories they had of him - thank you. These will all be forwarded to Didi and then published in the next issue of the blog.

But I would like to say a few "Eve and Ella" specific words. I think the one thing that we agree on is that we didn't know much about his background. Apart from knowing that he was fostered we don't know when or why this came to happen. Perhaps even sadder is that it seems possible that neither his birth parents nor his last set of foster parents will know that he has died. And that sums up the whole sad situation for many of us!